Route reliability record
ORD→XNA
Chicago to Bentonville
- Flights
- 1,733
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 522 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,733 ORD to XNA flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly ORD to XNA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.9%, against 76.4% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,692 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.02%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
76.2% on time across 1,545 flights
These figures cover 1,733 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to XNA
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 126 | 81.7% | 47 min | 3.97% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 1,545 | 76.2% | 63 min | 1.75% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 52 | 69.4% | 84 min | 5.77% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 9 | 66.7% | 45 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on ORD to XNA
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am253 flights88.0%
- 8am–11am147 flights82.6%
- 11am–2pm362 flights79.7%
- 2pm–5pm113 flights70.8%
- 5pm–8pm625 flights70.1%
- 8pm–5am233 flights73.8%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 88.0% of the time, against 70.1% for the evening window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 625 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 62.5% on time, against 86.1% in May. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. April was the busiest month here, with 205 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.9% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 73.3%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 25,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 16%Carrier
- 12%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 24,968 reported delay minutes.
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit.
Cancellations sit at 2.02% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.35%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 522 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 75.9% on time across 1,736 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,733 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in XNA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 86.1% on time and December 62.5%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,692 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to XNA questions
How often is ORD to XNA delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.6% of the 1,733 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ORD to XNA compared with the rest of the country?
76.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ORD to XNA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 70.1%, 18 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on ORD to XNA?
December is the weakest month at 62.5% on time, compared with 86.1% in May. Across the year that is 24 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- XNA to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on ORD to XNA81.7%
- Envoy Air on ORD to XNA76.2%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- DFW to XNA, a related route78.2%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- United Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record81.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record76.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. ORD to XNA and XNA to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.